The Road Goes Ever On
by Shamoosh
Summary: A collection of oneshots, ficlets, and drabbles, all based on the road to Paradise and the wolves who walk it.
1. Parallelism

**Title: **Parallelism  
**Fandom: **Wolf's Rain  
**Length: **Roughly 300 words  
**Rating: **G  
**Characters: **Tsume, Toboe, Gil  
**Pairings: **None  
**Summary: **Tsume considers, in the span of a few seconds, the parallelism between this time and last time.  
**Notes: **The very first piece of Wolf's Rain fanfiction I have ever written. I tried to keep Tsume in character as much as I could while still making him seem slightly distracted. The end result? I think he's a little insane.

* * *

He was running on the pipes again, the dome above and gunshots below, people ahead and a kid behind.

He wondered if Toboe would slip and fall like Gil had, if he would get there in time like last time or if he'd be too late.

He wondered if he'd turn and stop and try to save him at all.

So many options. It didn't have to be like last time. Maybe that "god" the humans worshipped had given him a second chance, had thrown him back in time to keep Gil from dying.

He heard a stumble in the kid's thudding footsteps, then a startled gasp and the screech of metal. He turned on instinct just like last time—or was it last time done over?—and was crouched before the redhead before he could think to leave him.

His teeth found purchase in the kid's shoulder, the illusion flickering in his haste, and this time the kid didn't flinch and scream like he expected.

But no, this wasn't Gil. It was different, wasn't it? It was the same chain of events, but something had changed along the way.

Where did the two timelines deviate? Back when he was chasing wolves instead of humans or when he realized that Toboe's hair wasn't so much red as russet brown?

The kid closed his eyes against the pain of the other wolf's teeth, and then he was back on the pipe instead of plummeting to his death.

"Go on," he said, because now the kid could. Gil had stopped forever, just like the human he was, but Toboe was resilient. Toboe was a wolf.

Toboe had looked death in the face twice now, and he'd been scared and shaking but he hadn't stopped.

Toboe was worth something. Gil was not.

Maybe this 'Paradise' place was worth something too, if a kid like Toboe was going there.


	2. Miles To Go

**Title: **Miles To Go  
**Fandom: **Wolf's Rain  
**Length:**100  
**Rating: **G  
**Characters: **Kiba  
**Pairings: **None  
**Summary:** Kiba's always had an eye for the future.  
**Notes: **Drabble. A possible explanation for why Kiba always seems so far away and yet so confident. Inspired by Robert Frost's verse, "And miles to go before I sleep."

* * *

Kiba catches himself staring, off into the distance that he isn't seeing. He blinks the dream away, tries hard to focus on the present, reminds himself that he isn't_ there _yet, that there are oceans to cross and ground to cover.

The flower scent distracts him again, and once again he's _th__ere, _seeing and feeling a place that hasn't happened yet.

Kiba knows that they've already reached Paradise. The journey's over, it's been done—the events only have to catch up to reality.

He lives his future every second of the now.

It's a future he doesn't want to leave.


	3. Instinct

**Title: **Instinct**  
Fandom: **Wolf's Rain**  
Length: **533 **  
Characters: **Toboe, Tsume, Kiba, Hige, Lira**  
Pairings: **None.**  
Summary:** Although he's been raised a human, Toboe is a wolf. Sometimes it shows.  
**Notes: **Yeah…not too sure where this one came from. I haven't updated in months and months (sorry!) but this one just popped up out of nowhere late one night. Inspired by the proverb, "Instinct is stronger than upbringing."

* * *

Only an hour or two after meeting the first of his kind, Toboe gets to talking about his Granny, thinking the scarred wolf would understand. Instead, Tsume insults the both of them, saying she only kept him as a house pet. That hurts, that hurts a lot and Tsume doesn't know what he's talking about! Toboe snarls for the first time, and for the first time anger really rises in him and it's like this older, jaded grey wolf really brings out that nasty part of him he's always ignored.

On the street, Toboe thinks about Tsume and seethes, aggression filling him and giving him the strength to scare off those stupid crows. Then Lira appears and screams, and then she wails about him being a freak and yells at him to stay away.

"Why? Didn't you come here to catch me?" Toboe glares and the smell of her fear fills his nose. He reaches for her angrily, overcome by some instinct he didn't know existed until Lira falls and he realizes what he's doing.

Then, later, when the pack is together and on the ocean of ice, Toboe's puppy legs and endurance aren't quite enough to keep up. Tsume and Hige make their remarks and his limits frustrate him to no end. His arm hurts and he's tired, and then that _monster_ appears.

It knocks Kiba and Tsume aside like they're nothing, and Kiba screams when its tusk impales his leg. Tsume and Hige attack it, but it's like the monster doesn't even feel them through its thick skin.

Kiba makes a noise like a choked off scream behind his clenched teeth, and it all gets to be too much. Toboe's pack mates are in pain, are fighting, and he's so mentally and physically exhausted that he just can't _do this_ anymore. For a moment he just sits there and shakes.

And then Toboe gets angry. He _hates_ this monster that's hurting his pack, the only thing in the world he has left, and something deep inside of him snarls and rages and_ screams_ in a voice furious and howling and all he can do is react.

He screams out with the beast inside of him and lunges at the monster, sinking his teeth into its eye and holding on even after it's thrown itself underwater. He holds on through the freezing water, through ice and wind until finally it shakes him off, covered in ice splinters bigger than he is and streaked red with blood. He stares it down, that thing inside him snarling and howling for blood, and after a moment of animalistic intensity it falls down dead.

It takes a few moments before the horrible, raging beast inside of him calms and subsides. Toboe falls to the ground and shakes, horrified…but another, wide-awake part of him is triumphant.

Hige says something and it snaps him out of his stupor. "What got into you?!"

"Something happened," Toboe whispers through his shivers, remembering and trying to forget, "and then…I just…I just—I don't know it was like something deep inside of me just snapped all of a sudden."

He closes his eyes and clenches his fists and doesn't feel human anymore.


End file.
